loving the little things

Life is crazy busy. But great. There are so many tiny things that happen everyday that make me love life. They are such little things but make me grin and laugh at the tiniest things that can make me happy. So I thought I'd share just a few of those things to show a little of my appreciation. :)

1. Freeway Entrance
There are only a couple days a week that I go straight home from work, which is when I take the freeway home. The other days I'll go straight to the gym or errands. But when I take the freeway home, I love love the entrance I take. It seems so lame I know! But the good 'ol 1600 N Orem entrance is a simple part of my day that I love. It has a special lane that you don't have to stop at the light for and can just round the curve and go. ... yeeaaa.

2. Elderly lady at Zumba
I loove this elderly lady that comes to the same Zumba classes that I go to. Now this is a pretty high impact, active class. So I love that there's this little lady that kinda comes just to keep moving, regardless of the routine. So cute. This significantly increased last Friday when I was next to her in class and said, "If I get in your way, just kick me!" No! She's so cute! :)

3. Subway Kid's Meals
Instead of getting a six inch sandwich, I now get the Subway Kid's Meal, where the sandwich is pretty much the same size, plus I get a drink and a side. For the SAME price. Yea...oh, you get a toy too.

4. Unexpected Visits
I've had several friends randomly stop by recently, and I love it. I'm not really in the areas where people are coming in and out (which I'm grateful for), but I love it when people have just stopped by to see me for a minute when they are in the area. It's great.

5. Having the apartment to myself after a long day.
I love getting home and just being able to settle in by myself as I unwind for the day. I

6. A clean fridge
Last week, we cleaned out our fridge and it is amazing! I love it. I get happy every time I open it. I can see all my food!

7. Getting free or really cheap stuff
Like last week when I got a free $10 gift card to the mall. Yea, it was great.

8. Random Christmas reminders
I'm so excited for the holiday season, and while I have yet to prepare personally, I love when I walk in a store and otherwise hear some Christmas music or see decorations. Yea, I'm not the type that insists on waiting after Thanksgiving. For me, it's all part of the season.

9. New friends who I click with and tell me nice things about myself
Haha, yeaaa who doesn't like hearing nice things about themselves. I've made some great new friends recently, something I haven't really done for a couple years. It was suddenly easy again and I'm so thankful for these new people in my life.

10. Old friends
Along with new friends, I love the opportunity to become better friends with old friends again. It seems like so much changes, and I have a hard time when the distance increases. I may not be the greatest friend, but I am grateful when the opportunity to rekindle friendships comes along.

11. Hearing from Susie on her mission
She always has the perfect thing to say to me, and I'm so grateful we can e-mail. Oh it's great.

I feel like there are so many more little things as well. Each time I realize another tiny thing I love, it makes me appreciate everything in life so much more.

Jazz Game—Front row

These are four photos from the Salt Lake Tribune's photo gallery for the Nov. 5 Jazz v. Spurs game. And you can see me in the background. Yes, we were on the front row!

This is the ticket. Do you see the price?? $904.00 Isn't that insane? I must say, I like Row A. It's easy to find. :) We were part of the 100 Club so we got to go in the elevators and have little elevator operators take us to the proper place. Then there was this HUGE dinner. We had the whole table setting and a waitress taking our orders for drinks. The dinner was kinda like a big buffet, but with nicely dressed attendants at every spot opening up their silver platter asking, "Steak?" "Salmon?" We did three courses: salad, main course, and desert. Man I was full! I tried salmon because it's one of those things that I don't really like, but think I should like it just because it's healthy. And where else to try it than at this super nice place. It was ok, just a little chewy. There was a lovely view of Salt Lake City lit up in lights. We got our lanyards for our passes, plus little Jazz basketballs. When we were leaving, one lady was passing out "mints." I thought it would be a lifesaver-esqe type. Not so. It was this rich, indulgent, chocolate mint thing that was like an inch deep. It was crazy looking around and thinking, "Man, these people drop 1,000 bucks on a basketball game? Whaaaat."

We were there with my date's (Mike) work, so there were a bunch of people with us. But we probably had the best seats. About six of us were on the front row, a few were right behind us, and several were on the side about row six. Row six tickets were about $400, while the second row was about $700. When we first sat down, I was like...are you serious. We are ON THE COURT. If those fancy guys in red jackets weren't there, we could totally walk up to the players in like 2 seconds.

I had to take a picture with my feet showing, so there's no confusion. I was not zoomed in. I was right there! The only people in front of us were the newspaper photographers who sat on the floor in their little parking spots.

We were on the Spurs' side, so if I looked slightly to the right, I saw this:

Hello Spurs!

When Boozer threw the ball in, this was my view. No joke. If I had longer arms, I would have reached out and touched him. I bet that would have gone over well.

Do you guys know this guy? He's HUGE. He was coming in for someone about mid-game, and my eyes grew big and I was like....oh my goodness! Apparently he's like the 3rd heaviest guy in the NBA. Or so I've been told.

At halftime, we were escorted (really followed the crowd) to our special room, where we were greated with MORE FOOD! I was like are you serious?!! Drinks, sandwiches, egg roll type of things, nuts, popcorn, goldfish, nachos, candy, etc. etc. One of the workers was like, "If there's anything else you'd want, let us know. Do you want ice cream? We can get ice cream." We were like, uh, we are ok for now. As we walked out, the attendants handing us printouts of the game stats so far. Yea, we were pretty important.

Another funny thing is that on the night of this game, my date's roommate (they are in my ward) was having a birthday party at their house. So most of our ward was there, also watching the game. Apparently lots of people saw us on T.V. because Mike kept getting tons of text messages. I was like, "Hmm. Who do I know who watches the Jazz games?" My options seemed limited. However, today one of my friends in the ward was like, "Hey so the entire ward saw you on your date." "Really?" "Yea we were at Tom's party and watching the game and suddenly everyone's like 'Look, it's Mike and Karianne!!'"

So, although no one texted me at the game to tell me they saw my ever important self on T.V., they did see me. And I am content. :)

Halloween

It's been a few years since I've dressed up for Halloween, or actually had fun plans for the holiday. This year was tons of fun! I was kinda stumped about a costume, but I went with my friends Marie and Whitney to D.I. and in passing Whitney saw this red, polka dot shirt and said "Hey, you could be Minnie." Ten minutes later I was back looking at the shirt and trying it on...and decided to go for it. The shirt was a little big and had long sleeves, so I cut the sleeves and put elastic on the ends to make them a little poofy and took in the sides a bit. Then I used the leftover sleeve fabric to make my bow that I attached to the mouse ears I got at the costume shop.

We had a big stake, plus other area wards, dance in a big barn in Payson. There was food, hay rides, supposedly an outdoor movie (I never saw it) and lots of people. The big thing about the evening was that a group from my ward had learned and been practicing the Thriller dance to all randomly start doing the night. Every Monday evening after FHE, we'd gather to practice. I was one of the first people who learned the whole dance and then helped Nate, the guy who organized the whole thing, teach everyone else. The dance was kinda like a line dance where you turn around and the whole thing repeats, so Nate would stand in the front for when we started, and I'd be in the back when we turned around. It was fun, and people gave my a lot of complements about my "awesome dance skills." Unfortunately my stupid camera battery died right in the middle of the Thriller recording. We have the first 30 seconds or so. My roommate Marisa recorded it as well, but her camera guy was really stupid and it's all bumpy, plus he only recorded the section of people who didn't really know the dance and it doesn't look cool at all. So I'm stuck sharing my 30 sec clip. Nate is the guy in the orange jump suit, and you can probably see my Minnie ears in the back. (Man those things threw me off when it came to dancing.)



And a bunch of pictures! I don't usually post many pictures on my blog, but oh well. :) Sorry there are a ton.

My roommate Marisa and I.

Me and my friend Marie. Yea, she's a bit taller than I am. I love my white gloves. :)

My fun girlfriends in the ward: Marie, me, Whitney, Brittany. We have an angel, Minnie, Pebbles and the Queen of Hearts.

A group of all the Disney characters at the dance. Yea, I admit, I had to think for a minute if I was Disney. Sad I know.

Recreating the Thriller moves for a picture. I'm between Matt and Nate Seely. These guys/brothers are awesome dancers, so it's fun. Yea, that's a laser pointer. It showed up amazingly in the foggy barn.

A group of my ward. Yea the roller derby girls and their coach dominated the front row. :)

With two Jack Sparrows. The one on the right is my home teacher.

Yay for Minnie... uh, yea.

Just some peoples in my ward. I had to post this picture because Shark/Flash was a friend of Ruthie's and now he's in my ward and we are friends. Fun.

Lots of lots

Hello everything! My last couple days have been BUSY, busy, BUSY. Tomorrow continues, so I dedicated tonight to getting a bunch of stuff done since there will be lots of playing the rest of the weekend. I've done a lot of errands and gone to the gym, among other tasks to complete tonight. Next up is cleaning my room. Yea, so I'm blogging.

I feel like there are so many different things to blog about. Time just hasn't been on my side. Goodness, goodness. But the following posts will be just a few updates. :)